Rikke Buhl
Professor and head of Section of Medicine and Surgery, Department of Large Animal Sciences, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen. Additionally, she is Head of The Graduate School at The Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences with more than 1900 PhD students enrolled. She has supervised 13 PhD students and four post docs. Research focus is on cardiovascular adaptations to exercise, often termed “Athlete´s Heart” in racehorses with focus on translational perspectives. Especially atrial fibrillation has high interest and the disease is disabling for both horses and people. The horse is an alternative animal model compared to traditionally used models such as rodents and pigs and we show that the horse and human have several similarities regarding this disease. The research with establishing this new animal model has been funded both by the Danish Research Council, Marie Curie Horizon 2020 ITN network, Marie Curie Horizon 2020 IF and recently the Danish Cardiovascular Academy. The research methods goes from different electrophysiological measurements, echocardiography, various cellular and molecular analysis with collaboration between clinicians and basic scientists.